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WELCOME: The Only Multidisciplinary Design Conference In The World
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THE LINEUP
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Jonathan Alger
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Q & A Moderator
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Jonathan Alger is the architect behind some of the world’s edgiest museum and exhibit designs. As a founding partner of C&G Partners, an award-winning interdisciplinary design firm in New York, Alger works on a variety of projects, which have included exhibits at the National Museum of American History, the Bronx Zoo, and Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. Alger is fascinated by the potential of integrating web with exhibit design, and for his innovative creations, he’s won awards from the American Institute of Graphic Arts and the Art Director’s Club. More information about Alger can be found at his website:
www.jonathanalger.com
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Chip Kidd
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Book Cover Designer
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"The history of book design can be split into two eras: before graphic designer, Chip Kidd and after," says Time Out New York magazine. Since Kidd first appeared on the scene in 1986, a new standard was set for provocative book-cover design. Creating more than 1,500 covers for big-name authors including Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, and Haruki Murakami, Kidd has earned himself monikers like "inky colossus" and "design demigod." Publishers Weekly describes his work as "creepy, striking, sly, smart, and unpredictable," noting that Kidd’s covers "make readers appreciate books as objects as well as literature." USA Today hails Kidd to be "the closest thing to a rock star" in graphic design today. Kidd is a recipient of the International Center of Photography’s award for Use of Photography in Graphic Design, as well as the National Design Award for Communications, the industry’s highest honor. When he’s not busy designing a cover for the latest New York Times Best Seller from his office at Alfred A. Knopf, Kidd is likely working on his newest project: a graphic novel about Batman.
goodisdead.com
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Danny Yount
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Motion Graphics Designer
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Cutting into a story’s meaty interior and slicing it into juicy bite-sized pieces, Danny Yount designs title sequences for popular films and television. The motion graphics he created for the movie “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” painted a haunting film synopsis using characters’ animated silhouettes, which scampered like paper dolls amidst the film’s opening credits. That particular title sequence has been rated as one of the 50 best title sequences of all time by IFC, and The Hollywood Reporter proclaimed it “worthy of the late Saul Bass.” Yount earned an Emmy for his title work in the TV series “Six Feet Under,” he’s been elected into the Alliance Graphique Internationale, and he currently works as a creative director at Prologue Films in California. He designed the vivacious title sequences for other films including, “The Reaping,” “The Invasion,” “Iron Man,” “RockNRolla,” “Sherlock Holmes,” and “Tron Legacy.”
dannyyount.com
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Brian Collins
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Brand & Experience Designer
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Brian Collins is a whimsical designer and storyteller first, a rebel advertiser second. Before launching his own communication and branding firm, "Collins" in 2008, he spent nine years as the chief creative officer at Ogilvy & Mather where he led a troupe of 30 self-proclaimed "creative misfits" to create award-winning campaigns and designs for blue-chip clients like Kodak, Motorola, Coca-Cola, and IBM. One of the projects Collins is most known for is the design of Hershey’s chocolate factory and retail store in Times Square. Originally hired to create a simple billboard, Collins and his team instead created a Willy-Wonka-esque 15-story factory complete with smoke stacks that belch colored steam, 4,000 blinking bulbs, and glowing candy-bar brands. Another of Collins’ projects, the Helios House, is the first-ever LEED-certified gas station, which was built for BP in Los Angeles. The metallic, mind-bending structure earned Collins the Grand Clio in design from the Clio Awards. He’s been compared to Tom Hanks in the movie "Big" — "childlike in his enthusiasm and freshness, but with an understanding of markets that is nuanced and sophisticated."
collins1.com |
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Karsten Schmidt
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Computational Designer
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Karsten Schmidt (aka Toxi) describes his approach to design as "treating ideas as software at the heart, which in turn informs all other facets of each project." While the title of "computational designer" seems to fit Schmidt best, he says he holds a niche unto himself. Based in London, this German-born designer has a trans-disciplinary way of working — merging computer code, design, art, and craft skills to engage in a variety of digital and hands-on projects in divergent fields. One of Schmidt’s most recent works is an installation piece he created at the V&A Sackler Centre in London: a laser-cut ornamental room divider covered in 620 hand-folded white paper cones, creating a textured canvas for an interactive, projection-mapped pattern generator. After working for various ad agencies, he now designs at his own branding studio, PostSpectacular, where design, art, and software development collide. Schmidt won honors at the British Insurance Design Awards in 2010, best magazine cover design at the Type Directors Club in 2009, and the bronze award at the 2009 European Design awards. When asked what his tombstone might read, Schmidt says, "Jack of all trades, master of none."
postspectacular.com
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Vincent Leclerc
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Lighting and Performance Designer
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With the flip of a switch, Vincent Leclerc creates breathtaking experiences using a few tricks of the light. He is a co-founder of ESKI, a Montreal-based studio that engages audiences with lighting and interactive technologies. The studio used PixMob, its wireless lighting technology, to give an emotionally-charged experience at a 2011 Arcade Fire concert. During the band’s climax, a swarm of airy, lit-up, interactive balloons tumbled onto the fans, changing colors and surfing the crowd like dozens of enormous pixels. Leclerc also collaborates with XS Labs to develop electronic textiles and responsive garments, and he teaches physical computing at Concordia University.
uttermatter.com
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George Lois
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Art Director/Magazine Designer
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“George Lois, pioneer, innovator … is an advertising genius … Superman of Madison Avenue … America’s master communicator” –New York Times Magazine. Lois has had a finger on the pulse of American culture for the past 50 years; he knows how to win an audience. He designed the highly controversial covers of 92 Esquire Magazines which stunned readers, skyrocketed circulation sales, and made Lois famous. Lois has performed marketing miracles such as popularizing the Tommy Hilfiger brand after just one ad, and a few of his other clients include Xerox, Aunt Jemima, USA Today, ESPN, and MTV. “Every industry has its stars, and in the world of advertising, George Lois is a Supernova, the original Mr. Big Idea. Since the ’50s, he’s had a titanic influence on world culture,” says Business Week. Lois helped launch VH1 and created a new marketing category, Gourmet Frozen Foods, with his name, Lean Cuisine. He is the only person in the world inducted into The Art Directors Hall of Fame, The One Club Creative Hall of Fame, with Lifetime Achievement Awards from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Society of Publication Designers, as well as a subject of the Master Series at the School of Visual Arts.
www.georgelois.com
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Neville Brody
Neville Brody is recognized as a “cutting edge designer” who has revolutionized the world of typography and graphic design. His font designs ignore the traditional rules of typeface size, and he mixes fonts with decorative elements, distorting letterforms. With the introduction of the Apple Mac computer Brody was quoted as saying, “Finally we could…explore ideas that challenged our fundamental notions of what typographic language should be.” Issey Miyake, fashion designer and textile genius, commissioned Brody to create the store’s branding and art direction as well as a catalog for the boutique. Like Miyake’s own experimentation in materials, Brody describes the work as “a scrapbook of inspiration and cross-pollination.” Several fonts designed by Brody over his career include, Insignia, Industria, Arcadia, Blur, Gothic, Pop, and Six and by the early ’90s he was recommending moving away from the legibility of typography. Most recently he was appointed by The Royal College of Art as Head of Department for Visual Communications. He is also the current chair of D&AD's education subcommittee, sits as chair on the BBC Online Creative Advisory Board, and is a member of the film education advisory board to the DCMS.
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Margie Ruddick
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Landscape Designer
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“I design with my feet,” says landscape designer, Margie Ruddick. “Some people design with their computers, some people with their heads. I design when I am alone on a site, walking, looking.” For more than 20 years, Ruddick has been pioneering an environmental approach to urban landscape design, creating a new language for designers in her field that integrates ecology, urban planning, and culture. Her design for New York’s Queens Plaza has won awards for promoting nature in the city. “I like to find the point where the orderly becomes wild,” says Ruddick. “And the point just before wildness becomes, well, a mess.” Global in scope, her international design projects include the Shillim Institute and Retreat in the Western Ghats of Maharashtra, India, as well as the Living Water Park in Chengdu, Sichuan, China. Ruddick’s design has earned her the honor of being a finalist for the 2011 Cooper Hewitt National Design Awards, and in 2010, Ruddick was named as one of the top ten women in Green design by the Green Economy Post. She was once fined for cultivating "weeds" in her front yard. The charges were ultimately dropped.
www.margieruddick.com
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Javier Mariscal
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Multidisciplinary Designer
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“Javier Mariscal is a polymath who can, literally, put his hand to almost anything,” says IDFX magazine. A multidisciplinary designer hailing from Spain, Mariscal works in underground comics, illustration, mural painting, sculpture, graphic design, interior design, textile design, furniture design, and animation. Despite the rise of computers in his nearly four-decade long career, Mariscal remains loyal to the simplicity of pen and paper. Design Indaba magazine writes, “Mariscal takes risks and tickles the eyes of those who gaze on his work.” In 1980, he designed one of his most famous pieces, the iconic Duplex stool. In 1989, he designed Cobi, a Catalan sheepdog in Cubist styling chosen as the mascot for the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games. Some of his most notable graphic design works include the visual identities for the Barcelona Zoo and the Granship Cultural Centre in Japan. In 2010, Mariscal drew and co-directed the animated film “Chico and Rita” which is a nominee for Best Animated Feature Film at the 2012 Academy Awards. Mariscal is a recipient of the National Design Prize of the Spanish Department of Industry and the BCD Foundation grants in recognition of achievements throughout a professional career.
www.mariscal.com
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Iris van Herpen
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Fashion Designer
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"Ladies and gentleman, I think we just found our next fashion legend. HO. LY. SHIT," wrote one blogger after viewing 27-year-old Dutch fashion designer, Iris van Herpen’s collection, "Capriole," at the 2011 Paris Haute Couture show. Van Herpen is leading the outer limits of fashion — crafting ruthlessly adventurous pieces by combining rapid-prototyping (3-D printing) and traditional sewing. This process often involves van Herpen cutting strips of plastic using a selective laser sintering machine, then arranging the pieces onto the garment by hand. The result? Incredible textures like nothing you’ve ever seen before. One of her pieces looks like hundreds of slimy, black squid tentacles wrapped around a model’s torso; another looks like a female skeleton-cum-cocktail dress. "I see it as my expression of identity combined with desire, moods, and cultural setting," van Herpen says. Fast Company’s Design blog, Co. Design, described van Herpen’s work as a far cry from "clothes," rather they’re more like “sculptures with models hanging off them, which manage to pair the theatricality of [Alexander] McQueen with a computer geek’s soul."
www.irisvanherpen.com
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Alex Lieu
Alternate Reality
Game (ARG) Designer
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Alex Lieu is inseparably linked to the phenomenon of alternate reality games (ARGs). He is Creative Director at 42 Entertainment, a leader in the creation of cross-platform entertainment experiences. A mash-up between advertising, treasure hunting, and role playing, ARGs immerse audiences in an alternate reality, intricately constructed through a web of experiences and clues spread across TV, radio, newspapers, websites, e-mails, telephone, SMS, voicemail, and real-life manifestations. ARGs are defined by intense player involvement with a story that takes place in real time and evolves according to participants’ responses. In 2008, 42 Entertainment won the Cyber Grand Prix award at Cannes International Advertising Festival for the ARG that launched Nine Inch Nails’ album “Year Zero.” To celebrate the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft and AMD launched “The Vanishing Point,” an ARG co-created by Lieu to reward tech-savvy consumers. “The Vanishing Point” was the first global puzzle game of its kind, coordinating spectacular live events around the world with online puzzles. Over a million people were drawn to the website, and nearly 100,000 people registered and played.
www.42entertainment.com
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Rafael de Cárdenas
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Interior Stylist
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Super-saturated, candy-coated colors. Stark geometric patterns. These are the loud interiors that Rafael de Cárdenas designs. At his New York-based design firm, Architecture at Large, de Cárdenas’ philosophy is: concept over strategy, cosmopolitan over genre-specific, and atmosphere over static. "I never explicitly set out to pursue any one thing,” de Cárdenas says on his career as a designer. “I was fairly schizophrenic in my various pursuits as a teenager, but I have always been interested in moods and generating atmospherics." His diverse interests led him to work as a Calvin Klein menswear designer, an architect (his design for a rebuild of the World Trade Center was a top-six finalist), and a creative director for experience design at Imaginary Forces, a special effects production company. Today, de Cárdenas works full-time at his design firm, Architecture at Large. His portfolio here includes design for supermodel Jessica Stam’s Manhattan and East Hampton abodes, the OHWOW gallery in Miami, and Nike’s Bowery Stadium in New York. His most recent venture is a line of bold, chromatic furniture. Daily, de Cárdenas strives to “take note of the past while daydreaming the future.”
architectureatlarge.com
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James Victore
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Graphic Designer
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James Victore is hell-bent on world domination — via design, that is. For the past 25 years, he’s worked in nearly every format that graphic design encompasses, producing work that toes the line between sacred and profane. Known for his use of handwriting and messy scribbles in lieu of clean typography, Victore’s most famous piece is a poster depicting racism in a disturbing game of hangman. “My goal in work, as in life, is not only to think and act creatively, but to be brave,” Victore says. Today, he runs an independent studio, James Victore Inc., in New York. The studio’s work is represented in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., the Louvre in Paris, and it has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. “Victore’s work is hard to classify,” says graphic designer, Michael Bierut. “It’s so personal and conveys ideas with the directness of a speeding freight train.” Victore teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
www.jamesvictore.com
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James Ramsey
James Ramsey is the intrepid visionary behind the Delancey Underground project — an imaginative plan to transform a 60,000-square-foot underground railway terminal into a subterranean park for New Yorkers in Lower Manhattan. Reclaiming a train line that’s been abandoned since 1948, the design would involve Ramsey’s invention, the Remote Skylight, to filter in natural light for trees and plants. Courageous projects like this — the bold, the surprising, the super-modern — are Ramsey’s forte. His background helps explain why: During his design study at Yale University, he won a Bates Fellowship to study cathedral design in Europe. After that experience, he went to work as a satellite engineer for NASA, where he was part of the team that created the “Pluto Fast Flyby” and the “Cassini” satellites. From there, Ramsey went to work for DMSAS, a large firm in Washington, D.C. before relocating to New York to work at Penny Yates Architects. While teaching architecture at the Parsons School of Design, Ramsey put the pieces together to start his own practice in 2004 (RAAD: Ramsey Architecture and Design). He has since built over a hundred projects, both residential and commercial, across the country.
raadstudio.com
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Ivan Brunetti
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Comic Book Artist
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Ivan Brunetti makes dark, misanthropic comics that channel taboo-laden subject matter — making his adoring readers gasp with relish. Brunetti was born in Mondavio, Italy and moved to Chicago in the 1970s, always with a reverence for comic book art. He is most famous for his “Schizo” series, wherein he vents about capitalism, politics, and his own shortcomings. The Chicago Reader describes Brunetti’s work as follows: “A sense of humor as black an ink…a darkly funny, intensely personal, uncompromisingly nihilistic comic book.” Spin magazine writes, "Brunetti’s self-loathing and seething disgust is so unrelenting that it begs a simple question: What the hell is wrong with this guy?" Brunetti’s “Schizo” series ran four issues between 1994 and 2006. “Schizo #4” received the 2006 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Comic of the Year. The misanthropic cartoonist went on to produce two collections of gag cartoons (“Haw!” and “Hee!”). He’s contributed cover designs for The New Yorker magazine, and he is also the editor of “An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories.” Currently, he teaches classes on comics, drawing, and design at Columbia College of Chicago.
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Jer Thorp
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Data Visualization
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“The art itself is the software — not the charts that come out of these things, but the actual programs that I distribute into the world,” says Jer Thorp, data visualization artist. Thorp’s background in genetics explains the radical approach he takes to design — exploring the multilayered boundaries between science and art. His “Glocal Project,” for example, was a cross-breeding program for images; hybrids were created by combining image data. “Data visualization is often a very serious business, with assorted constraints and restrictions that typically apply to scientific pursuits,” Thorp says. “As an artist, I've felt that I can leave some of this objectivity behind and create work that has less to do with legibility and communication and more to do with aesthetics and concept.” Another of Thorp’s design pieces, a two-color screen print titled “Hope/Crisis” visualizes the occurrence of the words “hope” and “crisis” in the New York Times over a 20-year period. His work has been featured by The New York Times, The Guardian, Scientific American, and The New Yorker. He is currently Data Artist in Residence at the New York Times, and is an adjunct Professor in New York University’s ITP program.
www.blprnt.com
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Martin Kastner
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Service Ware Designer
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Martin Kastner is a multidisciplinary designer and founder of Crucial Detail design firm in Chicago. In 2004, he was hired by chef, Grant Achatz to help conceptualize and design the identity, service ware, and sculpture for his restaurant, Alinea. Over the next year, Kastner designed over 30 unique custom dishes and utensils for the avant-garde restaurant. “I try not to give people what they ask for,” Kastner says. “People come to me because [I deliver] what they have [not] thought of.” One of Kastner’s most popular items is the cork presenter: a set of prongs used to hold a wine cork for inspection.
www.crucialdetail.com
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Gordon Gill
Architect
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To architect Gordon Gill, size matters. When complete, Gill’s latest project, Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, will be the tallest skyscraper in the world. The tower, which is over 1,000 meters, has a spear-like appearance that’s conceptually derived from the fronds of a native flower that grows in the surrounding desert. It’s a reflection of Gill’s philosophy that there exists a "language of performance" between buildings and their environments. But size is not Gill’s only priority. His design is largely driven by his dedication to clean technology and sustainability in architecture. This is evident in Gill’s project, Masdar Headquarters in Abu Dhabi. This photovoltaic-paneled structure actually produces more energy than it consumes. Gill tackles these large-scale, pseudo-sci-fi projects through the Chicago-based architecture firm that he co-founded in 2006: Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture. In 2009, Gill was selected as Chicago’s Best Emerging Architect by the Chicago Reader. Today, the he is recognized as a fearless innovator in the realm of architecture, constantly redefining what it means to design with grandeur and sustainability.
smithgill.com
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Jonathan Alger
Jonathan Alger is a founding partner of C&G Partners, active in all forms of communication design, especially exhibitions, interactive environments and public spaces. He is a dedicated advocate of strategic thinking and the thoughtful use of technology. He served two years as national President (2006-2007) of SEGD, the Society for Environmental Graphic Design.
He has conceived and designed interactive, educational experiences for the Holocaust Museum, the Bronx Zoo, the New York Hall of Science, the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City, Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, the American Institute of Architects (AIA), American Express, Nasdaq and Sports Illustrated, among others. His projects include a visitor center for USAID, a public history installation for TIAA/CREF, two award-winning exhibits for the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), a studio tour at the Voice of America, and educational environments for the Japanese American National Museum.
www.cgpartnersllc.com
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SURPRISE! — SPECIAL GUEST ROUNDTABLE SPEAKERS
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Tucker Viemeister
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Product Designer
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Tucker Viemeister opened a world of pain-free possibilities for victims of arthritis with his redesign of Smart Design’s Oxo “GoodGrips” kitchen utensils. Formerly fulfilling the role of lab chief at Rockwell Group, an innovative design firm based in New York, Viemeister worked with clients like Gap, JetBlue, and Mercedes revamping product designs. He’s the former president of Springtime-USA, and he helped to establish Razorfish’s physical design capability and Frog Design’s New York office. When he became too big a fish for the pond he was swimming in, he branched off to spearhead his own industrial design company, Viemeister Industries.
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Michael Vanderbyl
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Multidisciplinary Designer
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Michael Vanderbyl’s life-long goal is to merge traditionally segregated design forms like graphic design, product design, and interior architecture. In his efforts to accomplish this mission, Vanderbyl has gained prominence in the design field as a practitioner, educator, critic, and advocate. His design firm, Vanderbyl Design has evolved into a leader in graphics, packaging, signage, interiors, showrooms, furniture, textiles, and fashion apparel. In 1994, Metropolitan Home magazine inducted Vanderbyl into their Design 100 Hall of Fame. His client list includes IBM, Polaroid, and Walt Disney. In 2000 he was named an AIGA Medalist, the highest honor in graphic design.
www.vanderbyldesign.com
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Jan Lorenc
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Exhibit Designer
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In each project he takes on, designer Jan Lorenc conveys “holistic, integrated messages.” At his firm, Lorenc+Yoo Design, Lorenc and his eclectic team of industrial designers, exhibit designers, architects, and environmental graphic artists work to dream up designs for museums, visitor centers, trade show exhibits, and theme parks — all very diverse, large-scale affairs. Employed by clients such as the Mayo Clinic, Coca-Cola, and General Mills, Lorenc and his team have tackled myriad exhibiting challenges. Lorenc coauthored the book, “What is Exhibition Design?” and he lectures worldwide on exhibit design.
www.lorencyoodesign.com
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Jonathan Alger
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Communication Designer
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Jonathan Alger is the architect behind some of the world’s edgiest museum and exhibit designs. As a founding partner of C&G Partners, an award-winning interdisciplinary design firm in New York, Alger works on a variety of projects, which have included exhibits at the National Museum of American History, the Bronx Zoo, and Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. Alger is fascinated by the potential of integrating web with exhibit design, and for his innovative creations, he’s won awards from the American Institute of Graphic Arts and the Art Director’s Club. More information about Alger can be found at his website:
www.jonathanalger.com
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EXPERIENCE: Up-Close and Personal
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Jonathan Alger
Chip Kidd
Danny Yount
Brian Collins
Karsten Schmidt
Vincent Leclerc
George Lois
Neville Brody
Margie Ruddick
Javier Mariscal
Iris van Herpen
Alex Lieu
Rafael de Cárdenas
James Victore
James Ramsey
Ivan Brunetti
Jer Thorp
Martin Kastner
Gordon Gill
Tucker Viemeister
Michael Vanderbyl
Jan Lorenc
